Let’s pretend the fly-by asteroid strikes Texas. What happens next?

Today’s the big day, when Asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass within about 200,000 miles (and come slightly closer to the moon tomorrow) of our fair planet.

This closeness of the approach can be seen in the short movie below (click it to activate).

Click to play movie. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

The very dark asteroid is estimated to measure about 400 meters across. Here’s a photo of the rock as it sped through space in our direction yesterday. It’s a pretty good shot considering the rock was still more than 600,000 miles away at the time.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

We’re all familiar with asteroids presenting end-of-the-world scenarios because of movies like Armageddon, in which a “Texas”-sized asteroid threatened Earth.

This, of course, is laughable because Texas is about 1,400 kilometers across and the largest known asteroid in the solar system, Ceres, measures just 900 km in diameter. For a deeper dissection of Armageddon’s scientific flaws, see here.

(Side note: The final scene of Armageddon offers an interesting take on the Russian approach to fixing mechanical problems with spaceflight equipment, especially in light of Sunday night’s launch of a Soyuz spacecraft. But I digress.)

Armageddon: Fun movie, flawed science. (Touchstone Pictures)

Anyway, it wouldn’t take an asteroid the size of Texas to cause a global catastrophe. According to NASA an asteroid would need to have a diameter in excess of 2 km to pose planetary-wide environmental consequences.

And 2005 YU55 is much smaller than that. Which is not to say it would not have an impact.

So what would happen if YU55, traveling relative to Earth at a velocity of 30,000 mph, struck the planet? Bad things, but not catastrophic things unless you’re living underneath the impact.

Just for fun, let’s say it hit land about 100 miles west of Houston (it was nice knowing you, Schulenburg).

This particular asteroid would probably produce a crater about 4 miles across. If it hit 100 miles from Houston it would produce a wind moving through the city at about 35 mph, and make a noise something like very loud traffic. We would also experience seismic shaking equivalent to about a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. There would be some dust.

If you’re planning ahead, for those living in Katy, be sure to evacuate toward the east.

You can model your own asteroid impact effects at the delightful Impact: Earth! website.

At its closest approach to Earth it would be moving considerably faster than escape velocity. So, to be “pulled in” it would have to be on a path with closest approach very deep into the atmosphere, so that air resistance would slow it down enough to bring it down (or possibly shatter it into fragments).

I’m not so sure about that, StanleyS. If the asteroid had come within the Roche limit, then it could have fragmented with some of the pieces being captured and others going into more energetic orbits. After all, that’s what happened to Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Of course, Earth has a much smaller and gentler gravity well than Jupiter, so that works against it. But YU55 is probably a rubble pile instead of a mass of ice, which works for such a scenario.

The scientific errors in Armageddon were so huge that it was really tempting to just sit there laughing throughout. For one thing, they were landing on the Texas-size asteroid in space shuttles! Specifically, they were landing just as if the winged shuttles were gliding to a runway-like landing.

Also, they were blowing up the Texas-size asteroid with just a single nuke. Since they did so just seconds before atmospheric entry, they obviously had to shatter the entire asteroid into fragments so small that no “buckshot” effect would occur at Earth’s surface.

Remember folks: if we ever do actually discover a large object on collision course with Earth, we have to divert its path. If all we do is blow it up, then the cluster of fragments continues along the same path. We get hit by buckshot rather than by a single bullet, which doesn’t really do us a whole lot of good.

The day of judgement is near guys. Pray and Worship Allah . Because God is only one . He is Our real ruler . I hope that you got my point
HOPE YOU WILL GET JANNAT (HEAVEN) IF YOU WILL FOLLOW ISLAM AND PRAY FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS SO YOU WILL GET HEAVEN IN REPLY
THANKS ….